Light Blue splits weekend at Levien

It was a weekend of mixed emotions and mixed results for the Columbia women’s basketball team, which went 1-1 in its final two home games of the season. The Lions achieved a 61-54 victory over Penn on Friday before suffering a 65-52 loss to Princeton on Saturday.

On Friday, Columbia (6-20, 5-7 Ivy) dominated a stretch of the second half and weathered a furious Penn rally in the final minutes. With the victory, the Lions split their season series with the Quakers (10-15, 4-7). Columbia also ended a four-game losing streak that included a 77-46 loss at Harvard on Feb. 19.

“It’s no fun to get beat [by] 30 any time in life, but obviously we did a good job of putting that game [at Harvard] behind us,” head coach Paul Nixon said. “I’m just really proud of our team.”

Columbia entered halftime on Friday with a 24-23 lead but ended the first half on a sour note, as senior guard Kathleen Barry picked up three fouls in the final three minutes. Freshman guard Brianna Orlich, who had one foul at halftime, then picked up her second and third fouls early in the second half.

All of Barry and Orlich’s fouls to that point came from defending against freshman guard Alyssa Baron, the Ivy League’s leading scorer. Junior guard Melissa Shafer guarded Baron for most of the second half due to Barry and Orlich’s foul trouble, helping to hold Baron to only three points after she scored 15 in the first 22 minutes.

Shafer also made her mark on the offensive end, scoring a team-high 15 points. With 15:07 left in the second half, she hit a three-pointer to give Columbia a 33-30 lead. Penn then went on a 7-0 run to take a 37-33 advantage. Columbia took a timeout with 12:29 remaining and came out of it on fire, outscoring the Quakers 21-4 in a span of just over seven minutes. With 5:20 remaining, the Lions held a 54-41 lead.

But Penn was not finished. The Quakers scored five unanswered points to cut the Lions’ lead to eight points. With 3:39 left, sophomore forward Tyler Simpson made a layup to push Columbia’s advantage out to 10. Penn responded with sophomore guard Brianna Bradford hitting a three-pointer, senior forward Erin Power completing a three-point play, and Baron sinking a jumper.

That jumper, with 1:53 left, got the Quakers within two points of the Lions. Baron did not score again, though, and neither did any of her teammates. Bradford missed a three-pointer with 1:09 left, and Baron missed one with 7.5 seconds remaining.

Shafer came through with a jumper with 28 seconds left to extend Columbia’s lead to four points. She then got fouled with 16 seconds left and made both free throws of a one-and-one to give Columbia a 60-54 advantage.

“The basket that she hit in the end was huge,” Nixon said. “I mean, that was obviously a monster hoop for us. And then she stepped up and hit those clutch free throws…so there’s no way I could be happier with her performance.”

With the win, Columbia climbed above Penn in the conference standings, moving from fifth place into fourth. The victory also made Barry and senior forward Lauren Dwyer the senior class with the most Ivy wins in Columbia history.

But Barry and Dwyer could not get a win on their Senior Night. Columbia was more competitive against Princeton (21-4, 10-1) than it had been when the two teams first met this year, but the Lions—like most Ivy squads for the past two seasons—fell to the league-leading Tigers.

“There’s a reason that Princeton has won 24 of the last 25 Ivy games that they’ve played,” Nixon said. “They’re extremely talented.”

With 7:58 left in the first half, Orlich hit two free throws to cut Princeton’s lead to 17-14. The Tigers responded with consecutive three-pointers to take a 23-14 lead. At halftime, Princeton held a 32-24 advantage.

The Tigers gradually extended their lead in the second half. With 7:29 left in the game, a three-pointer by junior guard Laura Johnson gave the Tigers a 56-36 lead. Columbia answered with a 7-0 run, but it was not enough.

Senior guard Addie Micir led all scorers with 17 points for Princeton, while sophomore forward Kate Miller added 13 for the Tigers. Dwyer scored a team-high 12 points, Barry scored 11, and Shafer had 10 for Columbia.

The Lions finish their season at Yale and Brown this coming weekend. Columbia beat both of those teams when they came to Levien in early February, but the Lions have yet to win a road game this year. Still, the momentum from a competitive weekend at home could carry over into Columbia’s next contests.

“We’re just focusing on the opponents, really,” Dwyer said. “We like playing Brown and Yale, and we like beating Brown and Yale. So we’re going to do our best to do that.”